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Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Where are you today? What are the metrics of the business that you would like to share?

Benny De-Kalo: I cannot share all the information, but I can tell you that we’re growing very fast. We have over 80,000 items and their total worth is over $280 million. We have almost 5,000 buyers online.

Sramana Mitra: What percentage of the buyer market is the 5,000 that you have?

Benny De-Kalo: Probably, there would be 30,000 buyers.

Sramana Mitra: So you still have a lot of headroom? >>>

Are E-Commerce Ventures Still Fundable?

Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What was the inflection point of the business? When you raised A, you had a million in revenue but you didn’t have a full indication of how fast this was all going to go. At what point in the story did you find that inflection point and what was the driver of that inflection point?

Benny De-Kalo: When it happens, you really feel it. When we did the few million dollar-round, we got some indication but it was not strong. When we did the last round, we saw the demand from sellers. We saw that the demand was there. When it happens, you really feel it.

Sramana Mitra: Can you pinpoint to what you did to get to that point? To the extent that you can look back and decode your strategy, that’s worth learning. >>>

Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who’s shopping to whom and when? When Jenny wants to get a GIA certification, is Jenny shipping directly to GIA, or is Jenny shipping to you and you are shipping to GIA?

Benny De-Kalo: The way it works is, Jenny goes online and describes her item to the best of her knowledge. Taking her information, we use our technology to get back to her with a value. If she describes it correctly, we assume that that’s the value that she should be getting. If she would like to move on, we create a prepaid shipping label, which is fully insured. The item goes directly to be graded by GIA. Once GIA finishes the grading, we receive the electronic grading report. Then it goes up on auction. My team also takes the images. >>>

Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 3)

Benny De-Kalo: Let’s take an example that will illustrate it. Jenny just got divorced after three years. When she got married, they had bought a $14,000 diamond ring from Steve, the retailer. Steve bought it for $9,000. Now, she’s deciding to move on. She wants to do something better with the money. She first goes to Steve because she trusts Steve. Steve says, “No, I can’t buy because I’m in retail. I’m not in the business of buying pre-owned items.”

He does recommend Jenny to go to eBay just as you mentioned. She goes on eBay and takes a picture. She also tries to describe the diamond to the best of her knowledge. Her knowledge is very limited because she really doesn’t know the color or the clarity. What she doesn’t know is she’s not alone on eBay. On eBay, there are diamonds listed for over $3 billion. 95% of those items do not sell. They do not sell because Jenny and the others are not power sellers. >>>

Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Why did you do this particular company? What was the idea that you started with and why that idea?

Benny De-Kalo: It took me a while to come up with the idea. I’m a finance person. At one point, we came up with an idea to finance consumers and try to provide loans against high valuations with very low interest rates. We soon found that the bigger pain of the consumers is that they cannot resell high-value items. We shifted the idea from providing loans to helping consumers liquidate high-value items.

Sramana Mitra: Was there a specific high-value item that you were going after or a specific price point that you were going after? >>>

Diamond Auctions Online: Benny De-Kalo, CEO of Worthy.com (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.

I recently had dinner in Berlin with Alex and Suzi Zache, founders of Auctionata, an online auction house that has scaled to over $150 million in revenue. You can refresh that story here. Here’s another online auction story that is scaling nicely as well, specifically in diamond auctions. The company is at over $50 million in revenue.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Benny De-Kalo: I was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. I moved to New York after the military service, which is mandatory in Israel. I went to school in New York and >>>